STATE FORESTS AS BIRD SANCTUARIES 



215 



Flicker About to Feed Young at Entrance Hole of a Berlepsch Nest Box 



Near Meriden, N. H. 



Photo by Ernest Harold Baynes. 



occupied yearly, has established thirty 

 feeding, drinking and bathing stations 

 for birds, and planted two areas with 

 special shrubs adapted to pruning for 

 bird-nesting purposes. In the Heidel- 

 berg forests, besides nesting boxes, 

 single shrubs or small groups of species 

 similar to those at Darmstadt are 

 planted in young plantations of forest 

 trees, and so pruned as to form plat- 

 forms for the nests of birds that nest 

 naturally in shrubs and trees, after the 

 method devised and practiced with 



such wonderful success by Baron Hans 

 Von Berlepsch on his estate at Seebach, 

 Germany. Here too are about fifty 

 feeding stations. At Baden Baden, 

 also, nesting boxes have been hung in 

 the forest, and plantations established; 

 but here, owing probably to the presence 

 of old trees having natural cavities, 

 probably not over one third of the boxes 

 are occupied. To my questions at 

 these places the foresters' answers were 

 always substantially the same: "We 

 consider birds of great importance in 



